Godless Girl … and the journey out

I am sure we’ve all been asked this question or wondered ourselves. But have you ever heard the answers given by Buddhists? Scientists? Mormons? Taoists? Roger Nygard, director of Trekkies and Trekkies 2, took his curiosity and sense of humor Read more…

... "I think men are more aware than women of their tendency to sin," one of the men suggested. "Maybe they can use this wisdom to help guide their wives."
I couldn't believe this was being discussed as a legitimate idea.
"Don't they understand?" I said [to my husband]. "These sort of misconceptions—the idea that Christianity subjugates women—drive people away from the church."
I wondered what he thought was so clear—that women bear a greater burden for the fall of man? "If I wasn't a Christian," I said, "these comments about women would turn me away from God."
I wanted to deconstruct the ideas that were chipping away at my confidence in the Creator, but I felt outmatched. Among the men in our group, conversations often felt like a Scripture-quoting duel. Each time a new passage was referenced, I had the same question: What's the context? Their response was nearly always a puzzled look. It was as if I'd just suggested we tear out pages from our Bibles and fold them into paper airplanes. Scripture, they reminded me, is inerrant.

This woman is starting to see sense. You can almost feel the warmth of the light bulb glowing brightly above her head.
Could this be the birth of a feminist? A liberated woman who realizes her entire religion has been anti-woman for 2000+ years? Maybe she could actually re-consider her belief in a god who would use authors with misogynistic values to be its voice?
But no. She can't doubt god or the Bible. She has to pound the square peg into the round hole any way she can. So she goes looking for a comforting justification for the sexist teachings in her holy book.
(more…)

So Ted Haggard—former president of the National Association of Evangelicals and pastor of a right-wing megachurch in Colorado Springs, Colorado—had a long-standing affair with a gay prostitute and smoked crystal meth. This was back in 2006. He resigned from his Read more…